you have to be a little bit crazy to survive

Entries tagged with child

I started out as a male character of some sort running through dark streets with a female character. There were zombies around, and as they started chasing us, I noted they ran as fast and as well as we did. The girl was caught, but I kept running because there was nothing I could do (also I think my character might not have been the greatest person during this part of the dream).

I lost the zombies, mostly because they were distracted by lunch. There was a logic-fails bit where I met up with another guy who I knew and apparently hid out with him a lot. At this point the dream decided my character was female, and probably about 12. There was a hideout of some sort behind a wall, accessed by a small opening through the back of a partly-destroyed bookshelf that was sitting on the outside of the building. I handed some scavenged things through the opening to the guy who was already inside the hideout.

The opening became less and less useful as the dream had trouble holding onto the concept (that was already ridiculous to begin with, it's hard to explain how this opening looked) and I realized I was going to need to hide somewhere else. There was a dresser nearby, basically on the sidewalk, and I think my brain was trying to force it into a more useful shape of some sort, like a wooden box of roughly the same size so I could at least hide and maybe even get some sleep.

I'm not sure how the transition happened but the next thing I knew, I was entering a shopping mall where a survival gang of people with military expertise were doing something. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing because they were getting ready to leave. I found some office supplies and said I was going to scavenge useful stuff, and dumped a bunch of them in a reusable grocery bag that I basically produced from thin air. I noticed a more organized container of some sort with a lot of office supplies in it that I remembered I had put together at some point before, but the team said they were leaving and I decided to leave it there and take my bag of randomness with me.

I was trying to convince the team to take me with them as they left the building, and it was now daylight. We had to push our way out through an angry crowd of people who were trying to get in, and the place we were leaving had suddenly become a police station. There were police officers around keeping the people from getting into the door we'd just left. We were able to continue on through the parking lot, and I was now a woman in about my 20's.

We were all running at this point, and most of the team was faster. They were heading for vehicles on the far side of the parking lot. Running near me was a black lady with her two kids, one in each hand. One child was a girl who was maybe 4 or 5 years old, and the other was a boy who couldn't have been more than 3. The kids couldn't run very fest, so I offered to help and took the little girl in hand. I ended up picking her up because I could run faster that way than leading her by the hand.

A car was driving through the parking lot nearby, and I got the sense as it came closer to me that the lady in the car was the sort of person who would buy children for nefarious purposes. Unlike the character I had started the dream with, I wasn't going to even think about that, but that meant I was in potential danger if the person in the car decided to come after me. As it was, I made it to the vehicles the team was getting into, and they did let me come with them.

As we were driving away, I mentioned the shady lady in the car. Someone made a joke about if we thought she wasn't the sweetheart she was in some other show (as if two different fictional characters had the same actress, which made sense in fail-dream-logic that was a massive hint we were all not in "real life" but some TV show plot).

We were driving through a somewhat wooded area when I saw we were being followed by a man on horseback. He was wearing a uniform that was somewhat police-man-Canadian-mountie themed, and he was leaning over the saddle so badly I wondered if he was injured. The car we were in wasn't going very fast at this point, and he was able to keep up and follow the car right behind us. He sped up enough to follow the car on the passenger side, and the person riding shotgun opened their window and started talking to him.

Turns out he wasn't injured, he was just really worried about some kind of qualifying test he had to do that day, something that would advance his rank in post-apocalyptic law enforcement or whatever it was he was doing. The guy talking to him said something like, "You'll do fine," and as a good luck charm, handed him his own patch that was the reward for that test (he hadn't sewn it on anything apparently).

The guy went off some other direction and as our car pulled away from him, I remember thinking that guy was probably doomed and the dude who'd loaned him his patch was gonna get it back under unhappy circumstances.

I'd just watched the movie Inside Man before falling asleep, and this is clearly influenced by that. Logic was messed up the whole time, but I think I was part of a news crew who was trying to interview a preteen male kid who had caught home-video footage of the start of the bank robbery, except this time it was one guy on the side of the street who started telling people to get down and pushing them down on the ground. If he was supposed to be a distraction or what, I have no idea.

The bank robber didn't seem to mind the kid taking video and it's almost like he found the boy amusing. I vaguely remember more footage the kid shot for fun later of his footage going viral over news networks, but the only channel he'd been able to find on a random TV was something like Faux News so the content there was obviously biased and obnoxious.

Then the dream rewound and I was the kid. This must have been after the initial recording was completed and uploaded, because I was in an inside room in a location that dream logic couldn't decide on: sometimes it was on a higher floor of the bank building and sometimes it was in a building nearby. For the bank version, I almost got the feeling the initial robber guy just let me chill there while he moved off elsewhere to do bank-robber things, and it was later established as a safe zone that police and media could move through in the building.

But right now I was still alone. I was watching the random television I'd found and waiting to see what news show caught on first to the robbery footage. I decided to change channels until I found ABC's main network and saw a notice saying the news hour was coming up within moments. As it started, they had a bit of an intro sequence but the cameras stayed dark. Hmmm were they picking up late-breaking news and scrambling to get it running?

Yep, the next thing to play on the screen was my video surrounded by a graphic that was branded with the ABC logo and whatnot, and the voice of a news-lady could be heard talking about my video and the robbery. The weird thing is, dream logic failed badly and the video actually looked like some kind of oldschool Duke Nukem-ish game's gameplay (in fact I remember thinking that's exactly what it was, and somehow that made sense while in the dream). I held up the tablet I'd apparently filmed the original video on, and started filming the news show for posterity.

It was around this time the news crew from the first part of the dream appeared, and someone said, "Are we going to get a mic on this kid?" and someone else was like, "Yeah." At this point it was hard to focus, and my point of view kept changing around various characters. I remember some issue trying to figure out what the kid's name was, and from the kid's perspective, I was having trouble figuring out what name to use. I vaguely remember "Ned" being a possibility, though at one point I wanted to say "Nev" (pronounced NEEV) but I realized that would probably get mixed up with the guy who hosts the MTV show based on the movie Catfish.

(Yeah, another chat log to sum up a very short dream. Sadly I haven't had the epic dreams or even anything very good much lately.)

tirsden: ohsweeet :3 I know I had a dream about Aster and Kouri [Shai's character] but I can't remember D: ... and something at the end about Steve Martin with a ton of kids like that movie Cheaper By The Dozenshai: Loltirsden: they were all fishing and two kids from another family walked by... "wanna fish?" "nah we're making toy sets" "how do you do that in the middle of a forest? O.o " "imagination" ......*two of Steve's kids run off leaving their poles behind*

This started with other stuff but got interesting as I was standing in a parking lot outside of a tall building in the daytime. I saw a dog flying through the air like it was swimming happily through it, about ten feet off the ground. It was a golden retriever type of dog. Meanwhile, buh? I kept watching, knowing something incredible was going on, and as the dog got further away there appeared just above it a kind of black mist in a tight swirl. Jagged black lines or black lightning came down from the mist and totally disintegrated the dog, and the whole thing vanished. It gave me the impression that something had just deleted an anomaly, and I wasn't supposed to see any of it.

I remember seeing a gentleman in Victorian-era clothing off on a sidewalk a moment later, and I think there was something else odd about it but I can't remember what now. The black mist stuff appeared above him too and POOF bye mister whoever you were. There was something else too that made no sense and then black-mist-vanished, can't remember what it was, but at this point I looked up at the sky and noticed there were very dark clouds that were parting in a wide circle above the tall building near me. I could see the side of a building with a whole bunch of windows in kinda dated apartment style, and that was falling very slowly downwards.

I realized there must be some kind of instability between our dimension and one nearby, and that I probably had very little time to find somewhere safe from the impending crash of that building up above. I had no idea how big the thing even was, and had a feeling that running away wouldn't suffice. So I ran into the big building because I (somehow) knew it had a deep basement system. I ran inside and started yelling for anyone to hear that they had to get down under the ground as far as possible. Even if we ended up buried but alive we might have a chance to get out or get dug out, in the meantime I just yelled at random people to go downstairs as far as they could.

I found some people having a church service in one room as I was trying to find the stairs down, and they were having trouble believing me. Whatever, sucks to be them, I kept going until I found a way down. The dream setting started to shift to where I was now only in a house and there was a downstairs that was still unfortunately half-open to open ground (large windows filled one wall, it was like the house was built on the side of uneven ground so the front door upstairs was on one level of ground and the bottom opened out onto the lower ground).

I was now trying to get a bunch of kids to hide, and I remember ducking down almost behind one couch and then thinking as I sat there that this wasn't going to help. I ran back upstairs and found a closet that had a laundry machine in it and enough room for someone to be in there. Several someone's technically, another girl arrived and wanted to hide with me while a third thought she could find somewhere better. I tried to tell her otherwise but she ran off so we shut the door.

Then the crash hit, and logic went all to heck. It felt like the closet had somehow been separated from the house and catapulted straight upwards. The explosion outside was something now like a nuke going off, and as the other girl and I kept our feet against the door while sitting on the floor with our backs to the washing machine, the floor started getting really hot. There were random sheets of metal like extra-large cookie sheets and possibly a flat plywood section or something, I tried sticking one or two of those under us to keep from being fried as the floor took on a look that it was burning straight through (reminded me a bit of partly-cooled lava texture in video games).

I remember thinking that if we were flying through the air, at some point we'd come back down and I had no idea how we were supposed to survive the impact. The logic fell apart so much though that the dream began to change entirely, to the point that I think I was telling someone else about it in a new house in a new location that I thought was actually not a dream, knowing at that point that the other part was a dream. I think I believed it was a warning, though, and that something really bad was about to happen.

I remember the idea that something tipped me off, but I'm not sure what. I ran to the windows and looked out, and saw a whole bunch of ridiculously large metal cubes (like Borg ships but smoother) arriving in the sky very high up and hovering there. I said, "They're here," and I told everyone to hide. There were random children of various ages and one or two adults in this house that my dream-self knew, and one person from real life which was my little sister who the dream decided was about thirteen again.

So yes, I told everyone to hide and I told them not to move, no to try and run away. Just find a good place to hide inside the house and stay there. I grabbed my white down comforter (that I actually own in real life) and found a closet that was painted white inside with fairly large shelves, like you could stack three or four rolls of toilet paper on each one. There was actually packages of toilet paper in there and not much else, and there were really only about two of them though they were some of the bigger packages (12 rolls, 24 rolls). I scooted under the bottom shelf with the comforter, toilet paper, and a random box of a half-decent size. Right at that moment my sister showed up to stand outside the door.

She seemed unsure this was going to work but I told her again to go hide, it was our only chance. She disappeared and I finished making a fairly decent hiding spot if nobody pulled the stuff out of the way. I lay there perfectly still and closed my eyes, and for some reason by this point the dream had decided there hadn't been a door on the closet in the first place. The house got very quiet and I started feeling very sleepy. So sleepy that it was like I could fall asleep right there even knowing we were about to or quite possibly now currently being invaded by aliens. I remember thinking I hoped if I fell asleep I would remain still and would survive simply because I remained hidden even while sleeping.

Light started to grow brighter, but my eyes were still closed. There wasn't any sound. I kept my eyes shut, and the light got brighter and brighter. I had a bad feeling there was one of the aliens standing outside the closet door right now, quite possibly staring straight at my hideout. I'm not sure if it was my imagination or a sorta movie-like dream info bit that showed a smooth, slender humanoid figure of a very light cream color standing out in the hall with a very bright light thing in its hands that just sort of glowed from some kind of central point.

I hoped that it couldn't literally see through the stuff I had in the way, and I was very aware for a very long moment of trying not to move, of trying to breathe without moving as much as possible. Then the light went away finally, and fairly quickly, and I realized the thing hadn't found me after all. I waited a bit longer and then peeked out from my hiding spot, saw nothing, and crept out further. One of the children came up to me whimpering and I asked if some of the others had try to run away from the house itself and she said yes. It was the two other adults, they'd been taken by the aliens and only the kids who had hidden stayed free for now.

While everyone seemed to think that for the moment we were safe, I knew better. I told them I had a bad feeling this was just a preliminary check, something fast to get the majority of people who didn't see it coming or weren't smart enough to hide right off the bat. I told them the aliens probably had some kind of device that would detect us but was clunkier to haul around or whatever, and now we needed to get out of the house. I think I was trying to figure out where to go, I have vague memories of some kind of Army base being nearby (maybe not very close but worth trying to travel to on foot) or possibly another structure with some kind of underground that was abandoned or not used much, and would serve as a better place to hole up and figure out what the heck to do, meet and/or gather others who had stayed free thus far.

I don't know what my solution was in the end, though, because then I woke up.

I was an Asian woman (possibly in Korea?) somewhere before the Industrial Revolution, in the town square of the small village where I lived. I was holding a young boy who couldn't have been more than two years old, who I think was a friend's child I was watching for the day while they were away. A European-style carriage came into town and stopped in the square, and everyone getting out of it seemed very nervous. Also, people around the village were now also acting scared, but I didn't understand why. It was like they all "got it," and I didn't. And yet, they weren't doing anything but standing around worriedly.

I asked the people near me what was going on, and they gave me wary looks for even asking. One lady came closer and whispered very quietly in my ear, "Shao Li." I knew then that this was a fearsome warlord who was known to leave no survivors. I think everyone around me didn't expect to get away, and were thus waiting to hope for mercy or a quick death. Uhh, whatever! I turned around and booked it for the far edge of town, keeping a tight hold on the little boy.

There were some trees beyond that and then a deep valley with hills afterwards, and as I started crossing the valley I heard gunshots ring out from the village. So much for mercy. I was worried that maybe the warlord used dogs to find any stragglers, but would they pick up my trail or just be confused by all the scents in town? If I could remain unseen, nobody would know I was out here. I followed just to the left of a creek cutting its way up the far side of the valley, and could see some encroaching shrubbery that made a nice tunnel along that waterway with room to walk on the side I was on. This also led into deeper forest.

Logic was breaking down by now. I remember looking back and seeing a modern-day freeway with a few cars going by, on the back-left side of the valley behind me. I reached the sheltering overhang and kept running along the waterway, and eventually out into some more grass broken up by rocky outcroppings and more bits of forest. Things started to fall apart worse when I tried to feed the little boy something, and I know in the meantime it did seem like there were enemy scouts out looking for us, or guessing there was someone who had escaped.

Although I woke up before any sort of resolution, we at least stayed free for the duration of the nonsense.

I don't remember the first parts clearly, but this was a really long dream. There were several characters stuck on an island that was having major volcanic activity by surprise. Something had happened to mess up the entire island's geographic ecosystem. Also, there was a factor involved with live dinosaurs being in the park on the island, although it was not until later that the term Jurassic Park was used in conversation. I think maybe in this plot that original concept had failed and somebody else later had tried to "do it right."

The characters that survived the lava and earthquakes managed to get a large black jeep or SUV type vehicle to a complex where they were hoping to find an option for safety or communication or the like. At some point I became a young woman character amongst the others, and there was another lady older than me, a man and a teenage guy, and a little girl of about eight and a boy of maybe five at the most. Their parents were already dead at this point.

In the complex, we were discovering things like rows and rows of empty cubicles and lab rooms that were completely empty of staff and had stuff strewn all over the place. Somebody found a dead body, so we were afraid that something like raptors were loose in the building. The older guy with us had a gun, but was low on bullets. By this time we were realizing that being stuck inside was a bad choice, but had a bad feeling we couldn't go backwards and had no real idea now how deep we were inside the building.

We came across this odd hallway where it branched at a cross-ways, and straight ahead past the intersection there was a thick glass pane set like a wall and we could see very dark hallways beyond. In the hallway to the left, there was a door set into the wall on its right where maybe that weird dark hallway could be accessed through whatever room was inside the door. I told the others to wait, and the kids were all "no don't go, it's too dangerous!" but I went carefully into the mystery room. I don't remember anything specific about it, except that it did lead into that dark hallway, close to the far side of the glass.

I remember feeling very exposed in that hall, and walking back towards the glass to investigate if anything might be worth seeing there, there was a sudden flash of quick, white light somewhere behind me, probably from the ceiling. It reminded me of the speeding cameras at intersections, but it also spooked me and the kids on the far side of the glass were yelling at me to get out of there.

I made it back into the connecting room without incident even though I feared something would get me in that dark hallway. There's a bit of confusion to the dream plot/logic here as I'm not sure if what I saw next was in that connecting room, or in another room near the main hallway intersection. Either way, in whatever room I was in now, I saw a lady with a black evening dress on that had no shoulders, and a bodice made to look a bit like two black flower petals covering her chest.

I think the two kids were in this room with me now, but none of us thought this person was actually here to help us, and she started pulling the top of the dress down. Somehow the older guys out in the hall knew about this, and wanted to see, but the kids and I couldn't get out of that room fast enough. I had a baaad feeling that what was under that dress wasn't human (I remember thinking evil vine-plant-like monster) and from the sounds of gunfire I was correct as we fled down the main hallway (having gone right this time from the original direction we arrived, or in other words, putting the glass-walled dark area to our left in passing).

The other lady in the group had decided to stick back with the dudes even though we told her to run, so it was just me and the two children as we turned a corner left and found two sets of glass double doors side-by-side that we realized could be closed and locked. This doorway would also put us into hallways connecting to the dark area, and the little girl was upset because she said she saw a ghost in the hall with me when the light had flashed earlier. I couldn't figure out what she meant by "ghost" and if she had seen it on the glass or actually in the hall with me, but we were running out of time. I'd rather face a mysterious "ghost" that hadn't killed me the first time (to the point that I hadn't even known it had existed) than get eaten by something.

I told her it would be okay, that we at least knew there was danger where we had been before, including the dinosaurs we still assumed were around somewhere, and we needed to lock the door. We had no idea if the others were even alive at that point, and if we sat around and waited we'd all die. So we started working on the doors, which was really messed up by dream logic and required being closed juuuust so in order for the locks to catch, and of course the doors didn't want to stay shut properly. Then when they did, the locks had turned from more simple rotating latches to something more like the plastic belt connectors you see sometimes on backpacks or amusement park ride seatbelts.

We had just gotten the doors properly locked when the man and the lady arrived on the far side. The teenage boy wasn't anywhere to be seen. They told us to open the doors, and he was being really mean about it, not really pleading but demanding it. I had a really off feeling about him (and I already did from the stupid "hot" lady episode), and if I opened the door for the chick who was stupid enough to hang out with him, I'd be letting him through too. He felt like a danger right now about as bad as the other stuff. At least it seemed he was out of bullets, so they didn't have any real option to get through the door.

As I was debating for a moment, he suddenly made a sort of "boo" face at us through the glass, including spreading the fingers out on his hands next to his face. I realized at that point that my impression was correct, even more so... we had no value to this man. I shook my head, said, "...sorry..." and took off with the kids.

As we ran quickly through darkened hallways and rooms that had absolutely nothing in them, I held the girl's hand and she had her little brother's. I told the girl to hold onto her brother's hand like their lives depended on it (which technically they did), and that if I had to I would hold both their hands but it seemed like I needed one free right now. I was using it to open doors at this point, and we were making fast progress even though we had no real idea where we were going. At this point it was mostly just knowing we were getting away from previous problems.

Suddenly one of the doors led us into a room crammed with office supplies and other junk, but more importantly, there were windows around the back-right and back walls. Daylight! There were desks along the back wall (also piled with stuff) but with enough room to climb up and open the windows. I opened one, and found that there was only a simple window screen between us and freedom. I could see that we could make it to the ground below, as we were on the second floor, but we were going to be okay! I was thrilled, and somehow could even tell that the surrounding area was relatively safe... that's right, it was raining. There was something about rain making the environment safe, I can't remember why. The dinosaurs were allergic to rainwater? Who knows.

In the meantime, suddenly a gust of wind blew what seemed like a whole bunch of mosquitoes into the room. The kids freaked out and told me to close the window, and in confusion I remembered the screens and then noticed that the lower half had much larger, almost artistically-placed holes in the screenwork. (I think the dream was just trying hard to fill a plot hole on the fly.) Then I noticed where the breeze was whipping stuff outside past the other windows, and that it looked a whole lot like tiny fluffy-ended flower or tree seedlings gusting around.

I told the kids this, that it wasn't bugs, and that held in the logic and vanished from being a dream element. At this point we were preparing to get the heck out of there, and thinking maybe there were a few things that could be scavenged from the room (like rain jackets or plastic trash bags to use as such) although we weren't going to take more than a moment or two. For some reason I had taken my shoes and socks off to get up onto the desk, or so now the dream decided. So I was fishing around in the junk on the floor for my shoes and started putting my socks back on.

The girl told me she thought I should bring the (possibly Pokémon?) cards with me, as she said she had a feeling they would be on the mantle in the new place we would get when we got free of this. Suddenly the plot element was added that I had been carrying (...how?? lol) a pillowcase with the cards as well as other regular playing cards and something similar. The entire thing was a bit on the heavy side, so I asked about the other cards, and she giggled and said they weren't necessary or entirely optional.

I said something in agreement to that, I can't remember what, and I think I was about to clear the bag out so there were only the cards cute lil' miss possibly-psychic wanted to see in the future home we were apparently going to share... which did seem right, I'd built up a connection with these kids during the adventure...

I think I was the daughter of someone who worked for a large corporation, and the person in charge of the corporation was actually a boy somewhere around the age of twelve or thirteen. He was spoiled and demanding and there was something about a plot where the company was being called out on wrongdoings and of course they were denying it, but I somehow knew or guessed that it was the kid who was behind it. There were other key people in the system who were working secretively with him, but not everybody.

I had a bit of a run of the place since I lived in the actual corporate building on a floor where there were living quarters. My bedroom with simple bunk beds set into a wall alcove was on the far side of some very thick walls (like, 10 feet or more) of the rich kid's grand bedroom and living area. I remember looking for some way to spy on the situation, and pulled a vent cover off from high up a wall near my bed(s). I saw immediately that it was definitely too tiny for me to actually crawl into, it was rectangular shaped with the wide part horizontal and looked like nothing had been through there in years, all dusty and stuff.

The vent passage itself curved off to the left just a little first and then right almost out of sight where I could just barely see the opening that went into the kid's room. In about the middle of the passage on the left side was another branch of the vent, and I couldn't see where it went to. Logic was being weird at this point (okay, weirder) and decided that I was fairly convinced there had to be some kind of small people living in the building as well, though I didn't actually expect to see them. And we're talking small like two inches or less.

Suddenly I saw one of the tiny people, a girl, which failing dream logic represented with almost a living version of something like a Duplo figure. She seemed unsure about showing herself but also there was something about them needing to find out for sure if I was an ally by default if I was a hidden enemy of the bratty evil kid. I can't remember the exact conversation but I remember promising whatever I could do to help and she seemed to believe me.

Then she told me how to get into the vent somehow (this makes no sense, beyond dream logic failing again, the vent was magically wider all of a sudden) and I did, winding up in the left side area which was now bigger and I could lay there looking back in the direction of my room and talk some more. That was safer I guess while we did some planning. There was supposed to be something going down either the next day or possibly that night, so it wasn't too much longer before I needed to get back out of the vent and pretend to get ready for bed. Apparently someone would be checking on me at some point to make sure they thought I was falling asleep like a good girl. (I am seriously not sure what my age was supposed to be in this dream, I think it fluctuated but was around fifteen or sixteen.)

In order to get back out of the vent I ended up doing something of a forward roll and fall into my bed that was now directly under the vent, and was no longer a bunk bed but more like a twin. I was going to close up the vent and then I realized that there were more of the little people around who were apparently having trouble with falling out of the vent. For some reason. One of them was even one of their "warriors", a black guy who I think was inspired by a video game high-fantasy RPG character I can't place now. There were also some little kids.

I was worried they'd hurt themselves, especially the kids from such a long fall, but they were somehow resilient enough to be fine. They were also starting to get ridiculously small, but I helped pick them up while the warrior refused help and started climbing back up the bunk beds (yep, they're back). Weirdly enough, when I set the children down one by one on the vent edge where their caretakers were now waiting to receive them back, they were.... like small yellow lumps of playdough that had been squished into flat circles. And yet, somehow still alive.

I said, "I didn't do this," and after setting all the... squished kids down... tried to figure out what it was that had smished them. I picked up a junk envelope from old mail that was nearby and found a weird moving piece of flat plastic-clay-like stuff that had a shape like someone had bent the middle short side of a rectangle enough to make a creepy little vague "head" almost like a sea creature or slug or something. It moved around with the rest of its weird self and moved pretty fast. I knew that'd done it.

Meanwhile one of the little people parents were saying something about how it wasn't safe to raise babies where they were anymore, and something about how this wasn't New York and yet we seemed to have the crime rate of it. Logic completely fell apart and I'm not gonna bother with reviewing the rest, there was only about a minute more of idiocy anyways.

I don't remember most of this anymore, but it seems like the first version of the dream made more sense, but then repeated while making less sense. I only vaguely remember something about Captain Picard being on another ship while I, as Geordi La Forge, was pretty much alone on the Enterprise. Whatever we did in that first version of the dream was a huge risk, and it worked out just in the nick of time.

On the repeat though, I was on the Enterprise alone again and I knew the captain and the rest of the away team would be beaming over shortly. It seems like there was something wrong with the ship itself, things were dark with not much lighting and there might have been some sparking conduits. There was a Klingon ship nearby, I guess we were fighting it. I set the transporters to beam me over to the Klingon ship before the away team got back, which was something the captain wouldn't have let me do if he had a choice. Too dangerous. (Like heck I remember where the away team actually was in the first place.)

I made it to the transport pad in time and was beamed over to the enemy ship. It was fairly dark here as well, and I beamed into a corner of a larger room. I realized there was a Klingon child nearby, and was worried he'd sound some kind of alarm. I think I told him that I was supposed to be there, that everything was going just fine like it should, and he bought the story. I didn't waste any time in case he changed his mind, but what amazing feat of espionage did I engage in?

I walked into a closet and shut it behind me. Some leap of intuition told me that there would be a secret door inside the closet... because the main closet door could lock on the inside. I found the secret panel and went through it, and ended up in a dream-logic-fail sequence of trying to find my way through passageways that really didn't make much sense for a ship. It was more like plywood and cardboard walls.

At first I was myself trying to do driving errands in the daytime before a really bad storm hit... running around Home Depot and not finding what I was looking for, then realizing what I wanted wouldn't even be in a Home Depot (and I don't remember now what it was I wanted). Weirdly enough by the time I was leaving I was in a wheelchair (one of the store ones). I remember knowing I didn't need it, but I was trying to pretend that I did. Once I was outside (and walking) again, I couldn't find the vehicle I'd been using.

Logic was already failing so badly by now, but it completely merged into a whole new thought. It was evening now, and dark out. Somewhere in this area was a large building used for meeting spaces and such. The story plot changed completely to being a Denzel Washington movie type idea, except it was real and I was his wife (and I was black too). We were there at the meeting place because he'd landed this big promotion or job or something he was so excited about, but when he went in to talk to the big wigs he came back all freaked out and stressed to the max.

The bigwigs had come back with him to continue the discussion though it sort of seemed like things had at least already been partly decided. It turns out that there for some reason was no proof that he was the father of my two kids (yesh we had kids says the dream logic XDD;; ) and we like always considered them formally adopted but now it was like he'd have to pay the company a bunch of money for them, to be on his health insurance and whatnot. I could tell how upset he was and it was like they'd pretty much succeeded in convincing him this was necessary, and I never got a figure for what they were asking for the kids but it must have been outrageous (and we were already a well-to-do family).

I got up and took my husband by the arm and said we were leaving. Outside I told him that the job wasn't worth it and WTF did they think they were doing? He was kinda agreeing, as if he were coming out of some kind of fog their manipulations had placed him under, and I had a feeling I'd pulled him out of a really bad situation.

Then logic failed completely and I don't remember any more of this sequence.

I was sort of myself and sort-of not, part of a team sent into a city that was crawling with zombies, trying to find the source of the problem. I remember a trashed street where we spent a lot of time fighting. We realized too late that this seemed more a suicide mission than anything else, as we were vastly outnumbered and were having to improvise weapons much too quickly as ammunition ran out. I vaguely remember the leader of our team, a blonde woman, realizing she was infected and doing some kind of heroic thing like running out into a ton of the zombies with explosives and blowing herself up. There was some vague reference to flying zombies, perhaps a genetics experiment gone very wrong, but the dream seemed to retcon that a moment later.

A lot of this is fuzzy because it was the first of several dreams involving the bio-zombie concept. The last bit of this one I remember was fleeing into a building of some sort, and another member of the team realized he'd been bitten. I think at this point there were, at the most, three or four of us. I walked right up to him with some kind of wooden stake/pole and stabbed him through the heart. He couldn't believe what I'd just done, but then he was shortly dead and the other guy(s) on the team completely agreed with how I'd handled things. Then I woke up.

I fell back asleep, and this time I was playing probably another part of the same story on a console (probably a 360 with how good the graphics were). The view on the screen was first-person perspective, and my character was part-way up a slowly-spiralling, sturdily-secured hanging staircase in an office building somewhere. A cutscene had just ended, and I was trying to pause the game because I had to talk on the phone. No matter how hard I pressed the start button, it wasn't pausing, and I was being attacked from below by a T-Rex skeleton that apparently had been animated by the zombie virus. It wasn't actually trying to bite me though, it seemed to be hellbent on head-butting me to death.

I figured the game had done this on purpose as some sort of surprise realism gimmick, so I figured I'd let myself die and reload the saved game because I was still dealing with the phone call. This seemed a lot like a boss or at least a mini-boss fight, but I noticed it wasn't hurting very much on the interface's life bar. That was a good sign, that meant when I redid the fight it should be pretty easy. Suddenly the T-Rex flopped down onto the main floor as if I'd defeated it. Apparently it only had so much fight and then the thing gave out completely. Weird.

At this point I was done with the phone call, then suddenly the game showed me the hanging supports for the stairs were coming undone (super-rust attack of doom?) and the whole thing was going to collapse. I ran off of the stairs before they fell, then wandered over to see what was up with the skeleton. It seems like there was someone else there now, some guy who was maybe a team member, and we were discussing strategy for taking this thing down if it happened again. It was also not a game anymore, but actually me (or some psuedo-version of me) and the person standing in the room with the dinosaur skeleton.

The dream rewound for a moment, as if the whole fight were happening again, except this time I had a chance to load my gun up with these large, pointed bullets that were "just the thing" for taking the dinosaur out. I think I was trying to kill it without going onto the stairs, because now I knew they had a limited duration and I wanted to see if there was anything I needed to get on the landing the stairs led to (the video game puzzle-solving concept was still in effect it seems). This bit is fuzzy, but I think I was succeeding in taking down the dino but I noticed that the second-floor-type landing had changed more into a catwalk that didn't look very stable. Then I woke up again.

I fell back asleep and this time I was an office-worker who was again sort of like myself. I knew something was wrong, thanks to all the hints from the previous dreams, but it seems like everyone on my floor had no idea and was doing the daily routine. I remember thinking maybe the virus was currently outside and hadn't gotten this far into the building. A group of ladies wanted to gossip and I blew them off because I was actually trying to find a way outside even if it was dangerous out there. Obviously staying in the city would end up a death sentence in the long run.

I was in darker offices before long and I think the zombie thing hit around then. People out in the main offices were toast, and I may have run across something myself (this bit is fuzzy yet again). I was now looking for weapons and not having much luck, but I did find a woman who wasn't infected yet, as well as a little girl. I picked the girl up and we went down a back stairway to the floor below. I remember wanting to protect the child but finding the other lady a nuisance. I woke up again.

Back to sleep, and now a sequence of elevator puzzles ensued. I was alone again, and I knew various floors of the building were badly infected. The main elevator shafts all seemed to open up in the same general area on each floor, but not all the elevators went to every floor. I remember one elevator going to the 5th, 11th, and 12th floors, and one on the 5th floor supposedly went to the 7th, 3rd and 1st. (I'm not 100% sure on the numbers but that sounds about right, considering I was keeping track of this in my head for solving the damn "puzzle." Whether I'm off or not, I'll talk about them like they are the correct floors just to avoid confusion.)

I think I was on the 5th floor when I managed to get onto the elevator that should take me down to the 1st floor, which was my target as I think it was the only one with street exits. I do remember basement numbers that I think I pressed by accident, but managed to clear with a cancel button (which of course I've never seen on an actual elevator in real-life). The elevator stopped at the 3rd floor and a guy got on who looked like Mr. Jones from Fringe. Oddly enough, the elevator now went upwards as if his priority for wanting to go up floors somehow overroad the fact that the elevator should still be going down.

Great, so now I was on the 7th floor where he got off. Somewhere in here I woke up again, and went to sleep again, not wanting to give up on this trail of interconnected dreams (I was actually enjoying them, even with the scary factor and the puzzles of illogical doom.) I was back in the office building on one of the floors a few stories up, and I was near the elevators. There was a black woman who was one of the secretaries, on some very open stairs near me, and it was a bit dark there. I think she knew something was going on, but she was going to take the stairs down and I had no interest in teaming up with her. At this point it seemed like it was gonna be a solo project for me.

By now I'd realized that I'd spent a lot of consecutive time in this building where other people were getting infected, and I wasn't. I'd even tangled with zombies and was still fine. Hmmmmm. I had a feeling that there was some reason I wasn't catching the virus, that I was somehow immune. So now I needed to escape not only to save my own skin, but possibly help make an antivirus or vaccine. Time to get crackin' on the elevators again. Plus, it seems like as soon as I had this epiphany, zombies were approaching. Yep, good time to split.

I thought the first elevator I got into was the correct one, but as I hit the button trying to get the damn door shut right now I realized there was only one number on it, and an arrow above it. The number was 75. Oh crap, I'd just gotten on the executive elevator that makes a non-stop trip to the 75th floor. Gaaaaaaah! Well, at any rate, at least the door would be shut for a while and I had time to think.

The back side of the elevator had another set of doors that was cordoned off by those easily-movable poles with a thick decorative rope between them. There was also cardboard taped over the doors. Hmm, that says "not allowed" in a major sorta way. I had my eyes on the poles themselves, and decided that since it looked like nobody could see what I was doing, I'd try to take the things apart and see if they'd make good weapons.

The pole part itself unscrewed from the top and bottom parts, and was now made of wood for some reason (pretty sure it started as metal -.-;; ). The ends were very pointy where they'd screwed into the other pieces, and it was about 2.5 feet long. Perfect. I got two of these things, though for some reason the second was shorter by about a foot. I also peeked behind the cardboard on the doors, seeing that there weren't actually doors there at all and I could watch the elevator shaft wall go by.

Right then a voice came over a speaker like somebody had been watching me; the way he talked it sounded like a security guard who was probably monitoring things from the 75th floor. There were suddenly a whole bunch of little tiny black cameras in the elevator ceiling now too. (Hey dream logic, you and I need to have a talk.) He was asking what I thought I was doing, and... yay for fuzzy memory... I think I may have said something weird was going on in the building, that it was dangerous, and I didn't even want to be on this elevator.

He was starting to respond like he didn't give a rat's ass and needed to report me and all this stuff... but not far into that he sounded like he was losing interest in the conversation, and forgetting that he'd already said part of it. Then he made this weird staticy almost-growly noise and the feed cut out. Greeeeat. The elevator started slowing down, and also for some reason it had gone from the size of a decent elevator to a rather cramped space. I pointed both my weapons towards the main doors and was sort of crammed in the back-left corner of it, ready to defend myself as needed. My main goal was going to be getting the doors closed again once they opened, and thus the elevator returning to where I'd gotten on earlier.

The doors opened, and I could only see a bit of the waiting room beyond. The lighting was very dim, and I could see a woman sitting in a chair facing away from me. There was some kind of decorative plant next to her, and I couldn't really see anything else. She was just sitting there making little odd humming noises, and I was trying desperately to get the elevator to understand that I'm hitting the damn button that indicates I would like to go somewhere else please. I think I hit it with my elbow at first while holding the weapon in that hand, then using my hand when it wouldn't cooperate. Mind you, the button is now smack in the middle of the back wall where the do-not-touch doors should have been (and no longer were).

The doors shut finally, nothing having attacked me though I knew there were bad things in that room that thankfully hadn't noticed me or hadn't gotten to me yet. As the elevator made its way back down, I made a mental note again that I still wasn't infected. Suddenly I noticed blood on the far ends of my weapons, as if I had been attacked up there but had made it through fine. There was suddenly also carpet in the elevator, so I busied myself with wiping the blood off onto it.

The last thing I remember is finally getting off the elevator of doom, and managing to get to about the 3rd floor or so. There were stairs nearby, the sort of stairs that go to all floors, and I decided that it was high time to screw the elevator puzzle and just walk to the first floor.

There was more to this, but the relevent part started with me as the little girl in Aliens, and Ripley and I were headed to an elevator on a high floor of a tall building. We knew we needed to get out. (I think this was supposed to be after that movie's timeline at some later point.)

Then I changed perspectives to either myself or another female character who was with the two already there. I had the only flashlight, and although I don't remember lighting issues on the floor we were on, when the elevator arrived it was dark in there. I threw the flashlight in there on the floor, as if it was important I do so (and I think dream logic had intended it to be, then went "wtf?"). So, suddenly I'm realizing that wasn't the smartest idea as the flashlight fell apart and I knew it was broken. For some reason it had 4 batteries in it when it was fallen apart, though I knew it'd only take two (they were C or D cells, and the flashlight was black and kinda heavy-duty).

So anyways we got on the elevator and apparently there were blue glow sticks on the floor as well, so at least there was a little bit of light. It seemed like that was important for more reasons than just being able to see. Some freakish unknown thing creeping around killing people? Possibly. The elevator itself was partly messed up, missing one door, and as it started going down floors we tried to put the half of the door in the center so it blocked off as much as possible. (It was moveable like a sliding closet door since it was broken. Like that makes any sense.)

Some of the floors we passed had an odd, dim blue light. Ripley and the girl were crouched down against the door with their backs to it, and I was on the far side watching the floors go by. Suddenly I saw a small version of one of the face-hugger aliens creep around the top edge of the door. There were more on the floors we were going by as well, but so far only this one had caught the elevator. Ripley was trying to stay still and keep the girl still, covering the little one's mouth so she wouldn't make noise. They were both very scared, and I think we knew that these things shouldn't be there and not only was it a bad sign that they were, but it was entirely possible we might not live through this.

I started slowly putting the flash light back together, adding in the batteries for weight. Then I stood up and mashed the top of it onto the alien as hard as I could. This apparently killed it... and it stuck to the door in all its goey deathness. Ripley pulled part of it off and chucked it into one of the floors we were passing (reeeally fucking tall building I guess), and apparently after the thing was dead or because it was so young/small, the acid didn't bother her (or dream logic sorta went "meh, don't care"). She pulled the other part off and threw that out too.

Now two more were crawling around about the same area, and I smooshed those as well. I think Ripley also threw those out... and then we got to the bottom floor and it was really well-lit, reminded me of an airport terminal. Nobody seemed to know anything was wrong. A security guard in a white uniform showed up to like... tell us we didn't have authorization to be where we were... and it gets fuzzy around here, but I think we were supposed to get taken to see the big boss guy of the building.

Then it got utterly psychotic. The three of us were made to get on this almost Disney Land kinda ride, a hanging moving thing that we could sit in with seats on both side of a small enclosed space with an open top. It was taking us through some kind of displays, like a weird mixture of the company's history and a collection of total "wtf" items. And then we passed this odd fan that was blowing really hard and realized it was blowing bits of broken glass with the air. We tried ducking to get away but it still hit us and it hurt. I had a wide collar on my coat apparently, and I was able to pull it up high enough to at least avoid some of that.

Now I knew for sure we were still in obvious danger, and being as I wasn't sure what would be at the end of the ride, I reached out to grab various things that might be handy from the displays (some of it was close enough to touch). I broke a possibly-fiberglass oversized pencil off a statue and stuck it into my right pocket near my knee on black cargo pants I apparently was wearing. It wasn't the best weapon but it'd be better than nothing (I guess). I also managed to snag a large paperclip (the big odd-shaped X-square kind you can use to hold lots of paper) and stuck it in the left knee pocket. If they didn't search us and locked us up or something, I might be able to pick a lock with it.

We passed at least two more of the glass-blowing fan things of doom, and eventually the ride ended. We got off it in this big, posh office, with large floor-length windows to the left, an expensive table ahead of us, and lots of spendy furnishings elsewhere. There was a man to the right, well-dressed in I think a maroon suit, and we knew he was the boss. He was acting like this was just some cordial visit or something, and didn't seem antagonistic or worried about what we might think of being put through the amusement park ride from hell.

Ripley seemed a little out of it. On the table were pictures of her new line of jewelry she was apparently trying to get into as her new career. This seemed kinda stalkerish to me. There were other pictures too, of her jewelry but more of it on massive displays that looked way more fancy than where they were currently being sold. The boss guy said that this was what he wanted to offer Ripley, a bigger and much better venue with his company where she could be rich and famous and make a ton of dough.

Not only did that sound weird after all we'd been through, but then he mentioned a new kind of drug his company was producing, and said it would help her feel all better. Apparently she was already on something for post-alien-trauma-stress-stuffs. It seemed like she was kinda buying the guy's salespitch. I switched perspectives to the little girl for a moment and told her that she was fine the way she was, and that the drug was a bad idea and I didn't trust this guy. I switched back to myself, and said something like, "He's probably going to say you need just one to make it all better... and then another tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, because you'll never be able to get off it."

Ripley seemed to be getting the picture, and I moved to stand by the windows. There was a guy next to me dressed in sorta black-ops gear, and the dream just sorta decided he'd been with us the whole time, was part of our team. He looked and acted a bit like FBI Agent Charlie Francis from Fringe. Both of us were looking outside, and really close by was the waterline of a lake or very large, calm river. There was a lot of very colorful pollution in the water, and it had formed into very recognizable and artistic images along the water's edge. There were cartoon characters and other things, stuff that seemed familiar in the dream but I can't really remember what now. The pictures rippled somewhat from distortion in the water.

I wondered out loud, "I wonder if there's something sentient in there. Something creative. Possibly on the drug." The drug the guy had just mentioned... something that'd keep whatever it was trapped under the water. I don't know if anyone took me seriously or wanted to do anything about it, as the dream shifted to something elsewhere with other people and mostly unrelated.

This dream made so very little sense I won't get into some of the details, plus some parts I'd rather forget, but at one point I was on a basketball court where a bunch of people were meeting each other during a break in a basketball game (half time? I have no idea). One of these people happened to be Vin Diesel, and as I remember... we were introduced and of all things ended up discussing shoes. I had finally gotten new shoes (something I need to do in real life, the combat boots I tried to order ended up discontinued by the manufacturers, argh!!!) and I liked them but I remember wondering something along the lines of how comfortable they'd be once my feet decided for sure if they liked them or not.

Anyways, other than the topic of my shoes I seriously don't know what else we talked about, though the concept of dating came up, I just can't remember the context. I think my own personal wishes were clashing with the non-logic of the dream and making the subconscious mess even more confusing. Then I think he went on to talk to someone else or something and my kid brother needed my help with something, leading me off the court.

There were more children near the wall beyond the sideline, they'd been playing there for a while. It turns out one of them was climbing too high along a wall and nobody else was paying attention beyond the kids, so there I was trying to tell someone to go get more help and the daredevil kid to get down or not to jump (cuz he'd definitely hurt himself) and he had this wild look in his eye that said he was thinking about it anyways. I stayed right below him thinking I could catch him if he did jump without either of us getting hurt badly... maybe... and then suddenly he completely vanished.

I knew he'd just materialized over in a dark room just off the basketball gym (don't ask me how) so I snuck over there in the ensuing confusion to ask him how he'd done that. I knew it was some kind of magic, it had to be, and I wanted to learn to do it too. He said he could unlock it in me or something like that, and would show me how. I agreed to this, and then the logic really fell apart so I'm just gonna skip the rest.

I was standing on a beach somewhere. There was a city off in the distance, in a valley created by surrounding mountains with a lot of snow on them. I don't think anybody I know was there with me, and I really am not sure what city that was supposed to be, or even what country I was supposed to be in (kinda thinking I was on vacation somewhere exotic, but not really sure). It was getting late in the day.

Either someone was listening to a radio or the dream imposed the voice of Dubya announcing war on another country. The country I was visiting. A couple fighter jets were flying overhead towards the city, and a moment later a nuclear bomb went off in the enclosed valley. The ensuing explosion pushed the snow off the top of the mountains ringing the city, so it just looked like a great big mushroom-cloud-in-progress poofing snow before it around the edges of the city's valley.

The explosion continued mercilessly towards those of us on the beach; almost everyone turned and ran straight into the ocean. I'm not sure about the ones who weren't smart enough to do that, I was too busy trying to swim under the water away from the cloud of death. The first heat wave went over and everybody under the water avoided injury. For some reason there were suddenly a bunch of medieval swords and daggers in the water, some partly destroyed, so I think the explosion had dropped stuff on us. I grabbed two sturdy short swords and used them to help pull me through the water faster by stabbing my way along the sand below me.

The water became too shallow, so now I was running through it and there were a few other people near me. We were ahead of what was left of the main crowd. I think there might have been one adult and two children, all male, nobody I knew. The older of the two kids had an ARMY-style walkie talkie, and he was talking to someone in the military strike force who was asking questions about who had survived and if anyone was injured. (I'm pretty sure either the kid found the thing moments before or it was something he had for a hobby, and the military guy was surprised to get a signal from where we were.) The kid asked me if I was hurt and I said no, the only thing I could really feel at the moment was that my back extremely warm thanks to the destruction behind us, but it wasn't worth mentioning as the kid was busy enough talking to the guy on the other end.

Around this point in the dream we were definitely in America somewhere, even though we didn't actually change locations (yay dream logic). I don't remember if the military guy gave the kid instructions, but we were pretty much making a bee-line away from the bombed city. The walkie talkie either stopped working or it was off or the guy on the other end had stopped talking. Our trajectory took us off the beach and into a housing area. We ran straight into the first house which was partially collapsed on the side we hit, and the structure was so weakened (and I was so strong? lol) that I could pry the first layer of sheet rock out of the back wall of the house, pull the planking in the way out as well, and kick down the back part of the wall. Apparently this was faster or safer than trying to go around buildings.

The next house we went through, I recognized my bedroom in somewhat of a messy shambles even as I started tearing into the back wall like the previous house. (This was a random bedroom, as if I had been living with parents or something.) I said to the kid, "You know what's ironic?" and the kid with the walkie talkie said, "What?" and I answered, "This is my house." I didn't stop for anything in my room, I was too busy busting through the back wall (I seriously pretty much didn't care, knowing we had to move fast and were leaving this place far behind as soon as possible). It didn't break as cleanly as the last one, and I warned the people behind me of some splintered timbers sticking up where they might cause injury if someone wasn't paying attention.

The people behind me and the kid were starting to fall behind just a little; there was an older gypsy lady among them, and not really all that many people to our little haphazard group, but we weren't gonna leave them behind just yet. This gave me a moment to look around and see if there was anything worth grabbing in my immediate vicinity... something useful, I wasn't gonna carry junk around for nothing. There were clothes and bags strewn about a partly-collapsed picnic table by me. I grabbed a bag made mostly of black mesh with handles and what looked like a baby bonnet made of white mesh with a big black satin frill and I figured that would work for a hat for now in case I needed shade from the sun. I stuffed the "hat" and whatever else I was carrying into the bag (not sure if the dream logic had figured out I'd still have the swords if I possibly could). It was time to run again.

I started as myself. I think my kid brother and some random child were playing with toys that were a mix of Union-side civil war soldiers and feudal Japanese samurai, ninjas, that sort of thing. The Union soldiers were the good guys and the Japanese were the evil side. I commented on the strangeness of the battle mix, finding it nonsensicle but amusing.

Then the battle was real and I was in the thick of it. I think I was some sort of female, high-ranking officer (or at times, a generic soldier) on the Union side, and we were trying to hold a much-blasted fort on a beach. The sky was overcast but for the moment it was daytime. We were doing pretty badly, and it seemed like reinforcements were coming on the bad guy side. Not only that, but the Japanese were allied with Nazis... the Japanese were just the first wave. There was a general feeling in the air that we were so very screwed, especially if we couldn't last through this first wave.

By nightfall things had gotten so bad we were literally split up into single-combat against the invading force who were very much inside the fort walls now. I defeated my opponent but didn't kill him, and apparently he was someone important because all the other bad guys stopped fighting and watched. I told them all to leave, and they did, and then more samurai showed up. A bunch of the other guys on my side were freaking out, thinking this was yet more battle and we were so trashed the odds were very good this was it for us.

I was watching carefully and I realized as these guys marched right into our fort that they were a gift from the guy I'd defeated. How nice! They were here to fight for us, and it seemed like the other people we'd been fighting had withdrawn completely. The new samurai would answer to me, apparently, but just then we saw in the distance, far up the beach, what was surely a Nazi landing party. A lot of lights... gods, they had brought vehicles of some type. Samurai presents or not, we were so far outdated and outclassed, this wasn't going to work. (This sounds like an episode of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits or something lol.)

The initial front of Nazi troops looked like it was going to be scouts on motorcycles. Since they were still far off, we decided... to hide? Dream logic decided there was no more fort, troops besides me, and the samurai squad became a bunch of non-armored asian people, like a small family. At least I was still a soldier but, seriously, what the hell? Alright, so yes, we're definitely opting for "hide" at this point. Except we're in the middle of a very large beach... yay, lots of damp, grey sand. At least there is apparently a large amount of fabric (randomly) and so we hide under it and try not to move.

I'm thinking the pattern on the fabric (a lot of white and colors) is going to still be waaay too obvious... plus, one of the people under this thing is a little girl who's scared and making too much noise. I start singing very softly, someting totally random and wordless. This works, so now it's just me singing softly and for now, the Nazis on the loud motorcycles won't hear it.

Dream logic may have had some go by us, and then... reversed things... so the bad guys were again far away. Meanwhile the other adults under the fabric moved around a lot for some reason. After they stilled again, I remember looking up from under the fabric, thinking this is such a very bad idea and noticing that the motorcycle headlights were still really far away, and not coming nearly as fast as I'd thought. And then I realized the only people left under the thing were myself and the little girl. The nerve of those others, leaving us behind like that! Especially the kid. That's so low I can't even...

Anyways, at this point I figure it's time to bail. I pick the girl up and carry her piggy-back style as fast as I can towards the non-sand which seems still too far away but we make it. This area has a lot of grass, some random thin, branchy logs, and very little brush that would be so very nice for cover at this point. So I'm obviously still not happy with the situation, and I'm trying to keep down enough that I'm almost crawling sometimes, using my hands to speed my progress along as I run as fast as I can considering the conditions.

There are random single-motorcycle patrols here. I avoid them for a few minutes but one finally finds me. I... think the guy asks me something? I'm not even sure we speak the same language. (Memory of this encounter is fuzzy.) I think he told me to stay put, that he was going to go get some sort of commanding officer. Oh. Right. Sure, I'll sit here really nice. Yeah, this girl here, and me, we're just scared (and stupid) and sure mister! As soon as he's far enough away I'm running with the kid on my back again.

(I'm writing this fast from my scrawled notes in a notebook, on a public computer, so please forgive total lack of proofreading and editing.)

I was a child in an orphanage? There was an elderly lady who ran things. We were all supposed to be in bed but I had this idea (from somewhere) that my parents had left a way for me to contact them. And it was important to do so, I knew it. I was able to get into the attic and I found a mirror and I knew this was the special thing. I sat on my knees in front of it and said, "Mommy, Daddy? It's me, [whatever my name was in the dream]." I saw faint, shadowy-ghostly images of them appear to my right and left but somewhere behind me in the mirror image. But suddenly the mirror fell over in front of me, face down, and the mirror part broke into tiny pieces.

A friend of mine (another orphan in the home) had the power to fix things. (The 4400 came to mind at this point in the dream, it's like we all had powers but I hadn't discovered mine yet and I think the whole mirror/parents thing was going to tell me that I could do magic or something... so throw in Harry Potter world references too lol). My friend fixed the mirror and more of my friends arrived, so all of our special group was there. Four or five of us I think.

This time in the mirror we saw Sean Connery, Richard Pryor, and a woman actress who I've forgotten now. We saw back and forth head shots of them, and they were dressed in fancy Victorian England style. The whole thing was lit up like bright TV too. It suddenly started raining on the people in the "show" and only right on them, you could see it was like a rain machine was on just on top of them or something. Then it started hailing too, but just on Richard Pryor who started yelling words of confused pain, and it seemed like he couldn't move to get out of the way.

I'm not sure what happened next but we went on some sort of crazy magical quest between what's best described as small, semi-nonsensicle dimensions. I remember a lady dressed a bit like a carnival magician or a dancer with a similar outfit (top hat and cane). (The cane appeared several times during the dream and as it was repeated at crucial times I started realizing there was something important about it, but didn't know what.) There was also a little blonde-haired girl that I think we were magically pulled away from before we could learn anything from her.

I was separated from the group for some reason but part of my quest involved looking into a door that was painted like a big black swirly vortex. Doing so drew me into it (think special effects for being sucked into a black hole) and I was able to travel safely through the thing via magic. It was a bit like flying, and kinda fun.

I found myself in the same room as my friends, it looked like a hallway with a whole bunch of doors. My friends had all come through at least one of those doors, and there were scary evil monsters trying to follow them, but the doors were holding for the moment.

The fixer kid did a happiness check (I was reading the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player Handbook v3.5 last night which no doubt inspired this concept) and succeeded. It seems like every child had to do this once in their respective rooms or adventure circumstances, but we could only do it once, and I hadn't done mine yet. Anyways, fixer kid managed to get the doors to magically combine into one big set of double doors. And they were still, no monsters trying to break through.

We listened carefully and could hear the steady tap of what sounded like a cane on the floor somewhere past the doors and to the left. I figured we were on the right track and just maybe we'd find the person who was key to all this. We opened the door and all walked into the room and to the left. Here was a cozy Victorian English sitting area with couches and a highbacked upholstered chair around a round rug. There was an old lady in the chair (who looked like Grandma Wendy from "Hook") who had the cane, and a well-dressed man sitting on the couch to her right. I had a feeling we had reached the crux of our quest... the reason why we'd been taken on this ride.

The old woman stood up to talk to us and as we asked her things like why this was going on she said everything we'd seen had been manufactured purposely so we'd see what they wanted us to see. For instance, the little girl from earlier was actually a woman who had been acting from the waist up and the rest of her hidden below the floor. The old woman said something like, "In that sence, as soon as you left, the little girl Jane died."

I wanted to do a happiness check, I felt this was the room I was meant to do it in. But the old woman said it was impossible for me to do one here, due to what she had revealed. Plus, she had more to tell us...

I began the dream as a much darker version of myself. I was put into some sort of free-for-all environment that I think was a prison where people were sent to die. It was all underground, and a fairly modern-day setting. The top two or three floors were safe, but the floors below those were supposedly super dangerous and if you went down there it was your fault if you died. The top section was more like a bunch of apartments, and the lower sections became more like a run-down, abandoned shopping mall.

I had no weapon at first, and went straight for the first dangerous level. I killed several people (including children) as if it were nothing, and then one guy appeared with a switchblade, thinking because he had a weapon I would be afraid of him, or he would win the battle by default, or some such stupid thing. All I knew was he had a weapon and it was gonna be mine. I snagged it and killed him with it and a few more people.

Then I guess my conscience got to me and I decided not to kill anymore children. Plus, it seemed like I was getting a reputation and smart people were deciding not to mess with me; why bother with pointless killing when I could be working on getting out of here? It seemed like there was something more going on in this place than what I thought I'd understood. I had a short conversation with someone (the next couple of kids and an adult?), saying I was pretty sure that if I fought my way deep enough into the place I'd find a way out... and the kids said they might be able to help if I took them with me so they could escape too. They were pretty impressed with what I'd done so far (even killing the other kids), and I said that Riddick would have done the same thing, and he'd probably have kept on killing.

Then next thing I knew, I was Riddick, and I was in Landel's Institute and it was nightshift. In the dream, Landel's wasn't one large building but several buildings spread over a decent-sized complex with quite a bit of of grass, road, and concrete between the buildings. The whole complex was surrounded by deep forest, and somewhere in the dream I was able to look out a window and see that the surrounding area looked like dense, forested, rolling hills near a stark mountain range.

I was in the building where prizes for good patients were kept, except it seems like some of the things in the room had a bit too much potential, so perhaps this was actually storage or sorting of donated items before patients got to have a look at them, if they ever did. Maybe the doctors chose prizes from this room... there were several other patients in the room as well, and we were grabbing stuff as fast as we could. Some of the items I grabbed were meant as trade items, there was a lot of girly stuff like decorative soap, makeup, glittery bath oils and body lotion in soft plastic tubes, that sort of thing.

There were items that I intended to keep as well: gel pens, notebooks, and something I can't remember anymore that I knew could make a good weapon with some work. I think I found a somewhat kiddy version of a world atlas, which I thought might come in handy, along with some other magazine I'd have to look at closer later... stuff patients were no doubt never meant to see, because it would hold major clues about the world we were trapped on... assuming it wasn't planted to confuse us. It was getting difficult to hold all this stuff, but then I found various plastic bags and even tote bags made of more durable fabric. I snagged a tote bag before several other people near me went bananas on the rest. I threw what I had into the bag and I think there was some candy or other sugary snacks I procured next.

Then we heard the intercom announce that morning was about to arrive. And right at that moment the sun rose, and the sunlight now streaming through the windows made me feel really, really drowsy, as if I'd been hit by a tranquilizer dart... but I knew nothing specific had happened... and I also knew this always happened at the end of nightshift. I fought it hard tho, I didn't want to lose my bag of stuff. The guy next to me was managing to stay awake so far as well, I think several other people fell asleep right on the floor... but I really didn't care, I was forcing my feet away from that room and towards my assigned bedroom.

I had to cross open lawn to get there, and my room was one of many in a set of cabins all attached in a long line. I made it into mine, knowing at any second I was going to black out or get found by a nurse. The room was in semi-darkness but I stumbled to my bed and took the books out of the bag, hiding them first under the mattress as they were the flattest things I'd stolen. I stuck the frustratingly large bulge of the rest of the bag under where I'd be sleeping, and crawled into bed with that big thing underneath my chest area. I tried to lay so that it wasn't noticeable there was stuff hidden with me.

I'm thinking a nurse came in? And now I realize the beginning of dayshift hadn't put me to sleep like it should have... but it doesn't really matter because...

This started out feeling yaoi-ish. I was a young boy hiding in the top of a belltower in an ancient gothic church; there was just one huge bell in the top of this tower. Below I heard the evil master (of me?) and as he climbed the tower steps I hid in fear. Hiding worked, he didn't find me...

The next thing I remember is Spider Man and someone who looked a lot like the Green Goblin fighting on top of a very tall skyscraper. The villain was threatening to blow up all of New York with a nuclear bomb (and ironically I think that's where they were fighting... you'd think he wouldn't stick around for the explosion). Spidey is getting his tush kicked and escapes, and now I'm the villain and I dive off side of the building, hurtling towards the street far below. (The logical side of my brain is hoping I can fly at this point, but as I get closer to the street, I seem only adept at falling.) I manage to catch edges of decoration on the building, grabbing them just long enough to slow my descent. I arrive at street level slowly enough to not die...

...and then I become Vicky Vale (from the first Batman movie). I'm here to see a couple specific things in the city and I think take some pictures. (The logical side of me knew that this Vicky is from the past and not supposed to be in the timeline at this point; something odd must have happened in the space-time continuum. Also, Vicky and Spidey are supposed to become an item, but with time messed up, it's unclear what will happen now.) Anyways, Vicky-me stops a guy in the street to ask for directions (he looks like the reporter dude from the same Batman movie, the guy she sort-of works with).

I ask the guy where my hotel is; all I remember now of the hotel name was that it included numbers. He says it's quite a ways away, and I say, "Oh darn" and ask if he knows where some church is... I think it was called Saint Sepulchres. He's not quite sure what I'm talking about, but I see a huge, old gothic church not far past him and figure that's it (it's the same church I started the dream in). I point to it and say, "Ah, that's probably it, thanks anyways." He says goodbye but seems disappointed that I didn't stick around to talk more. It was getting quite late at this point, as the whole story began after nightfall.

I walk into the huge front doors of the church and find another copy of myself. And there's not just one... there's a bunch. They explain to me that they're all from different parts of the timeline, trying to fight the Joker who is here in the building. Some of the other-me's kick serious ass, and some are more ordinary girls like me. They're planning on trying another assault right now, as so far they've failed and it's like they're trying over and over on the same point in the timeline, but with more copies of "me" every new attempt.

I'm not really sure what the heck is going on, I just decide to go up the stairs towards the belltower (the area below the belltower gap is a large cylinder with one staircase winding up to the top). Suddenly, white sharp things made of porcelain formed into strange shapes come flying at me and I get lethally stabbed by one. Apparently this was part of the copies' plans, I was little more than cannon fodder. A few others are also slated to die while the rest try and kill the Joker. Yay, wonderful, I'm gonna die for this craziness?

I was a supervillain who could turn himself into pure electrical current. In this way I infiltrated a superhero base, skulked around for info, and then escaped again. I was able to travel between metal objects and electric power lines in long sparkly flares of energy. The information I had learned at the superhero base had to do with a child who was going to manifest powers soon and the good guys knew who she was. I saw her walking through a field, she looked like she'd just escaped a mental hospital or something... and was sorta wandering mindlessly.

I knew the superheroes were on their way to pick up the girl any minute now. One of the other supervillains (in the organization I belonged to) arrived, a female with telekinetic powers, and between the two of us we were able to get the kid before the superheroes did. We took her to our secret base where a few other supervillains were milling about. (There was more to this dream but I've forgotten most of it.) We put the girl into a containment field that kept her from escaping and/or hurting us should she manifest powers before we convinced her to join us.

(This dream comes off best when written from the point of view of the dream character that I lived through for the following surreality. So yeah, enjoy the psychoticness lol.)

I am a girl, a child of 10 or 12 and my mind is a mess. I'm in a house. Or... a school? Both maybe. I think I killed someone. A teacher. They were being mean to a student. I don't know why I killed them... it's not my fault! Something inside me made me do it. But I do feel happy that they died. And I know I'm going to get in big trouble, the police are coming.

I run up through the house until I find a way into the attic and onto the roof. I hide there while the police look around the house. They can't find me... one stays behind just in case I show up again. Time passes, I don't remember what I did, did I just lay here on the roof? It's dark now. The cop is still in the house. I jump off the roof and run down the sidewalk. I stop running and walk so I'm less noticeable. Someone might still think it's weird a girl is walking alone at night, even though this seems like a nice neighborhood.

I realize something. I... I can fly! I know this! I don't know how I know this or why I can fly but suddenly I don't care anymore. I fly upwards into the night sky oh so fast and light. And I know something else now... I'm invincible. I think. I know I can fly through outer space though and it won't hurt me. I can even breathe just fine. I'm so happy, I fly through space past planets and then... then I know that I know my way home. Yes, I'm going home. I know it's out there, I have a home! I know nothing about it except where it is. I fly towards it.

The planet is a shifting mass of lava and cooling crust that bursts here and there from the swirling volcanic action underneath. I'm afraid... what happened to my home? Something horrible... and I'm afraid I'm not quite tough enough to go down there. It will hurt and I'll die. I get a little closer, trying to see if there is any place on the surface that has survived. Yes, there's somewhere... it looks okay, there are just some active volcanoes in the distance. I'll go down there and see if I can find anyone. Find out anything about my home and did I have a family here?

I touch down in a large meandering garden. There are two people here, they are dressed simply in white clothing that looks almost medieval-peasant-like, with hoods over their hair. I walk slowly towards them, I don't want to scare them, they have probably been through a lot and just now they saw me fly down out of the sky. Are they scared of me? They are looking at me. I ask them who they are and what happened here, what happened to my home? They don't say anything, they just look at me and they're looking at each other in quick glances. Do they not understand me? Do they speak some other language here? Wait... something doesn't feel right...

Then something happens, I don't know what happened, my mind hurts. There are a lot of these people all around me and I can't run, I'm so weak. Did they do something to me? Shoot me with something? I... I...... I realize too late I should not have come back here. They... they are bad. I don't remember why, but I know that now as I enter dark unconsciousness.

I wake up. I'm in a hallway under guard. There's a room nearby with glass doors and someone is inside but I can't see who because the room is filled with steam. My brain is fighting to get a hold on thoughts that fly past. This is familiar... this is familiar? I've been here. The steam-filled room doors open and a girl comes out wearing nothing. It's my turn now, says the guards. Time for my shower.

I'm in the shower now and have no clothes on. This doesn't really bother me because it's familiar. Something in my mind says I know this all too well. This is normal. But I'm afraid. As the water turns on, the guard in the control room makes it too hot. He's doing this on purpose. They do that sometimes. I... remember... I... it's so hot it hurts. I... remember it was always like this... someone would be unlucky... and they'd just take it. It was life.

No! I'm not going to let this happen. I'm going to fight! I don't even know for sure if I can, this room should be sealed so that someone like me can't get out. But I see metal things on the wall behind the shower heads. I'm strong, I can do this! I pull them out, I don't even know if this will do any good but I pull all the metal things out. Some are just some sort of metal button, a rivet maybe, and some have long metal wires attached to the back that come out as I pull. There are a couple small metal plates above this, I pull them off too. I know the guard room must be going crazy, I don't have much time before they come make me stop. I'm surprised they're not here yet, in fact.

Behind where the metal plates were are two smaller metal things that shock me a little when I touch them. I take some of the metal things I pulled out of the walls and touch them to the current. I can feel it going through my body, it's a little bit painful but more annoying than anything. I look behind me to see the glass doors opening very slowly.

I don't give up, I keep holding the wires until the doors are wide enough to get through. I run fast, they try to shut on me but I get through. I hear people yelling. I run out a big entryway in the hall and... I'm in what looks like an earth shopping mall? I don't have time to wonder what's going on. There is a store ahead of me across the large mall hallway but if I go in there they will surely catch me. I can't depend on luck to put a backdoor in that place. It's a dead end in my mind. I run to the right, but see guards running towards me. They look almost like earth mall security officers with blue shirts and police hats. I know I can only run, they have drugged me somehow and I can't fight or fly or anything special. I have a feeling I'm lucky I'm still able to run.

I run the other way along the mall hallway and find an intersection that branches again. I run one way but guards are coming that way too. I run the other way and there are more guards. They're going to catch me. I don't want them to hurt me. I lay down on the floor, I give up. I'm still wet and naked and I feel like I want to die. They reach me and do something that makes me very weak again and as I pass out I know that they will be watching me very carefully now. I have lost my chance to escape. They will probably even erase my memory.

I dream, my tortured mind conjures memories from before. From when I was here and knew this place as my only reality...

* * *

(At this point, the dream does a massive flashback to back when I was living in this place that had recaptured me, previous to whatever events brought me to the planet earth.)

I am standing among several rows of girls my age, and we are all wearing the same strange white or light-yellow uniforms of a simple yet futuristic cut. We are singing a song, it's a song about the company or organization that's running life for us and we're supposed to be diligently loyal to it. But some of the girls have figured out something is wrong with this setup. We're being used, brainwashed, they say. I believe it. We've made up different words to the song that are almost indistinguishable from the real ones, and we sing them extra quiet just to be sure. Oh we are such bad, subversive girls. We'll surely be punished if we're caught. But it's all we can do... right? They control all. One of them is a woman at the front of the group, she's leading us on in the song and cheering and acting like this is the greatest thing in the world. But every time we get to the word "great!" as in "such and such company is great!" those of us who know better whisper "hate!"

(At this point in the dream I had a moment of lucidity, just long enough to realize I had to get out of there, that it was very wrong and I should get the heck out as soon as possible. I lost the lucid moment but my mindset had gotten a sufficient shock to actively want me to escape, as opposed to singing subversive song lyrics.)

The song ends and it's shower time. I don't have the opportunity to run on the way into the shower, but once it is over and the shower doors open I run straight past the guard, he wasn't expecting that at all and I completely bowl him over. Ahead I see the shopping mall... wait... have I been here before? Strange, a thought that I've seen this before, but I've never... never... I think I have a memory that shouldn't be there... from the future? But the fragment is lost again and I just know I have to run. I'm wet and I have no clothes but I don't care, I run straight into the shopping mall place and across the hall into the store right in front of me. It has clothes, I thought I would take some but now realize I don't have time as I hear shouting behind me. I find a lucky backdoor and run through it.

I'm in a service passage now and then what looks like an earth Wal-Mart. How do I know that? Where's this information coming from? Yes, I know I'm getting some sort of feedback from the future now... but I keep running. I have to find some clothes, the people here don't seem to know about my escape but they'll know something is up if they see me like this. This looks like the lawn and garden section of the store. I'm looking for clothes as I sneak fast through the aisles... and then I'm wearing an oversized gardening apron. It'll work for clothing if nobody looks at me too closely.

I stop running and just stride purposefully through the place. If someone sees me they will think I'm working here or belong here, I'm on my way to do something important don't bother me. It works, nobody stops me and I see doors in the back of this place. I enter them as if I totally know what I'm doing. Here is a large shipping or storage room that's mostly empty. There are more doors in the back, large doors like a truck might pull up here. I can't get them open... I walk up a long plank to an opening to another area like the last but it's darker. Here I see more doors and there is dim light coming through the cracks underneath. It's natural light! A way out!

These doors open and I shut them behind me. It's very late evening outside, the twilight is fading even now. And I see immediately... kobolds. Kobolds like in EverQuest, the short humanoid creatures from the online Earth game (they look vaguely like werewolves if you've never seen them). These things must be some kind of last defense against the possibility of escape... I get the feeling the company probably kills them off periodically, finding them annoying but slightly useful. There are several of them here and they move towards me looking hungry.

I can't turn back. I'll die here if I must. But no, I look into their eyes and I remain calm. I stretch my hands out... one of them bites me lightly on the fingers but it decides it doesn't want to eat me. They think I am strange to be unafraid. They decide I'm their friend and they can tell I am weak and they want to take care of me. They like me. There are two now holding my hands and leading me somewhere. Away. This is fine, I will go with them. They take me down a hill and away from the evil place I never want to see again. They take me to their home, a strange set of passages and outdoor ruins of some building so long decayed that only basic foundations and the slightest hint of walls remain.

I'll stay here with the kobolds until I am strong. Until I can fly and be invincible again. Yes, I know I can be those things because... I'm not sure why. My mind, what's wrong with my mind? It's so... fragmented. I have trouble remembering five minutes ago, but I've seen things I can't possibly have experience yet... but... will? Oh, it hurts. I am just going to rest here in the kobold lair and leave when I can. I'll be safe enough here for now. The evil people will think I got eaten. They know I am weak, that I have been under the influence of their weird drugs, that I can't be my full potential until it wears off. And surely the kobolds would have had a lovely dinner of me by now. I creep a little ways into a kobold tunnel and lay down. I go to sleep.

I don't remember the first part of this dream, except that it seems like I'd been accused of handling something wrong, maybe to the point that someone had gotten hurt or killed. But I do remember being asked to explain exactly what happened, and as I started explaining it the explanation became reality. I was only vaguely myself and seemed more like a woman a few years older than my real persona, and I was in a room in my house with two children, both girls around age eight to ten. Some sort of huge natural disaster struck, all I knew at first was that it involved a lot of water.

There was a strange square-shaped depression in the floor that we could basically fit into, like a step or two down with some vaguely alien-like architecture that looked like support beams coming out of the corners of this thing (on floor level) and going diagonally up to meet each other above the center of the square "hole." On the top of this thing was a small pyramid thing that could have been a roof if the thing was bigger and not sitting in this room. (I remember thinking it was vaguely Sith-looking in origin, it reminded me of the ancient Sith architecture on Korriban in the game Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic.) The point of noticing this thing is that I knew it might help keep me and the girls safe if we could stay inside it. The water might not be able to rush us out of the room and kill us or spread us too far apart to be able to help each other if injury occurred. So I got the girls to go into this thing with me and I laid down on the bottom with them, one girl under each arm, and all of us facing downwards. I hung on tight to them as the water rushed through the room (it seems like we had a few moments warning before this thing hit). It worked, we were okay and the flooding moved on (or whatever was going on was done with us, we weren't still sure what was going on).

The room was still more or less intact but really messy now, and very wet. There were other people in the house, and I knew I had to check on them. I told the girls to stay in this room. I'm almost thinking it was a first level room or even a basement, which seems like an odd place to stay during a water catastrophe but I think I knew it was over, so since there wasn't tons of water in the room I figured it was safe enough. I also somehow knew that this disaster had incapacitated at least the entire United States. I asked one of the girls if she wanted anything, and she said somewhat spitefully, "Crackers." (Her attitude made sense in the dream, but I'm forgetting bits... it seems like there had been some argument earlier about crackers.) I left the room and went to the front door (the house layout is really murky now, I'm not sure it made sense) and found a teenage boy who I think was supposed to be my son. (At this point some John Grisham-like flavor got thrown into the dream, almost like I was a high-priced lawyer or something who worked too much.) There was also someone else there, probably another family member (not my real family, but this made-up dream family of which at least one of the girls mentioned earlier was part of).

My attention was on the boy though, I wanted to ask him if he was okay and if there was anything he needed but as I started asking, I realized I wasn't even sure what his name was. This was supposedly my kid, and I was so disconnected from my family I couldn't even remember his name! So I appologized and told him I understood it was very careless and wrong of me to have let my life go where it had gone, but at the moment would he please tell me his name and if there's anything he needs? He said, "Mitch," and he was looking at me with sarcastic disgust. I did a double take, and told him I wondered why the heck one of my kids got a name like that, and it almost felt like I got the vague notion of some larger conspiracy. I told him we'd figure things out if we could, and I asked him to go join the girls in the room they were in. The other person went too.

I found a full or almost-full box of saltine crackers and I knew it was the one the girl had asked for earlier. I picked it up and went back to the room where everybody else was now. My food stamps card was there on a table, and it's almost like I used it at that moment to buy the crackers somehow. I was thinking that the card might not work during such a state of disaster, but it cleared the order without problems. Mind you, there's no grocery store present, just this room with my apparently-estranged family. Plus, weren't the crackers at home and mine already in the first place? Stupid dream logic. But I was happy to get my food stamps card back (it was almost like I had to get the crackers to do so) and now I thought perhaps the government had put an unlimited dollar amount on all food stamps cards during this state of emergency.

I called to attention the people in the room and asked them if there was any one single item in the house that they could not live without or absolutely had to have. I told them they should go find it right now and come back here immediately. I said, "If we get raided then you'll probably have lost that thing, and since we don't know what we're going to do yet or where were going to go or what we're going to take, you'll at least have that one thing here where it's safe." I was worried about looting, and I'd figure at first we'd fortify our position in this room and worry about what to do next after that.

One or both of the girls got up (they were still hanging around that weird thing in the floor) and I think the other person (not my son but whoever it was that was with him earlier) was making for the door; they were going to go get whatever thing it was that they wanted most badly. Mitch however didn't seem all that inclined to get going, and I said something like, "If there's nothing here that's so very important to you well then good for you," or something like that. That was some attempt on my part to imply that I knew possessions were just mostly junk and not as important as people... or something. Mitch said, "Well, I do have a lot of movies but there's so many of them." He still didn't seem like he was gonna go find something. I was on my way out the door at this point, and I said, "Well, I have a teddy bear that's not really replacable, as opposed to Jurassic Park which is."